Thread by @chrischirp

THREAD (a bit delayed) on UK & covid:

TLDR: flattish cases overall are masking differences between nations, regions & age groups. And we're still out of whack with Europe.

1/20

Vaccination update to start:
we've got good vaccination coverage - and excellent in older age groups.

Almost 60% of 16/17 year olds have had one dose of vaccine in England (higher in Scotland). BUT 2/20

There are big gaps in full vaccination uptake between the most and least deprived communities, and lower uptake in ethnic minorities.

This hasn't really improved over the last 6 months - whatever is being tried doesn't seem to be working. 3/20

On tests - the number of lateral flow tests done (or rather, reported!) has really varied with big "back to school" spikes that then drop off.

We're seeing that again now - and the drop off is mainly in students and not staff. Hard to say how this affects case numbers. 4/20

Cases are going up again in the UK - and we've now had substantially more confirmed cases in the Delta wave than the Alpha one. In a few weeks we'll have had more cases than we had between Sept 2020 and May 2021. 5/20

Yes hospitalisations and deaths are much lower than Jan peak - but they are still higher than a year ago and all these cases will be lead to many people develop long covid unfortunately, including some children. 6/

Hospitalisations are going down in all nations (good!) and deaths might just be starting to go down too - although we've been averaging over 130 a day for several weeks now and over 8,000 people have died since 1 July. 7/20

By nation, cases are going up in Wales and England but dropping in Scotland and dropping more slowing in NI.

Similar pattern seen in ONS infection survey (but Scotland not dropping yet - always takes a few weeks for drops in cases to show in ONS) 8/20

Regionally, cases are high all over Wales and in England concentrated in the Midlands and Yorks - lowest of all in London (!).

That pattern is seen in positivity rates too so it's not just testing. 9/20

Cases in Under 15s in Scotland remain high but have come down quickly over the last 10 days or so - and we are seeing a drop in admissions in children too which is good.

But a *lot* of children were infected in the first month of term - over 5% of all children under 15. 10/20

And we are seeing that hospital admissions in their parents' generation have been going up - in fact are higher now than they've ever been in the pandemic despite high vaccination. 11/20

In Wales, cases have been going up steeply in under 17s.

In N. Ireland, we've seen similar record breaking rates in 5-14 year olds. 12/20

In England, case rates in 5-14 are higher than their July peak - about 1.4% of all 10-14 year olds tested positive last week!

Cases also going up again in 15-19 year olds.
And in 30-59 yr olds - the ages most likely to be parents of school children. Following Scotland? 13/20

Hospitalisations in 6-17 year olds were dropping steeply at the beginning of September (corresponding to the late Aug flattening in cases?) but are now rising steeply again - only children have rising admission rates at the moment. 14/20

The number of children testing positive this term has already almost exceeded the number testing positive over the whole of the summer term. (158K vs 172K).

Estimates of Long Covid in kids range from 2%-14% - even 2% of 158K is 3,000 children developing Long covid... 15/20

ONS infection survey (to 18 Sept) also shows cases highest and rising in school age children. over 1 in 50 children had Covid that week. 16/20

Many of these cases could have been prevented with vaccination over the summer. It already looks like it (+ prev infection?) *might* be having an impact in 16-18 year olds...

at least they're the only year groups where cases fell over last 2 weeks instead of climbed. 17/20

Other countries that vaccinated teens are not seeing big back to school spikes in teens (but some are in primary school kids). E.g. Ireland... where cases in teens much lower than England but primary school kids about the same... 18/20

In fact many countries in Europe are not seeing big surges in children - a combination of vaccination (starting at different times over summer) and mitigations in schools (bubbles, masks, ventilation) & lower community case rates. 19/20

So there we are - rising cases in kids & their parents' generation, falling cases elsewhere, A high burden of Covid continues.

I don't know how vax in teens, some immunity from high infections this summer plays out against autumn & people returning to normal behaviour. 20/20